Posted By John Schoonejongen On February 28, 2011 @ 2:11 pm In Uncategorized | Comments Disabled

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President Barack Obama

Was he talking to Chris Christie?

President Barack Obama spoke to the National Governors Association at the White House Monday and hammered at several issues near and dear to the New Jersey governor’s heart.

“I also know that many of you are making decisions regarding your public workforces, and I know how difficult that can be. I recently froze the salaries of federal employees for two years. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do, but I did it because of the very tough fiscal situation that we’re in.

“So I believe that everybody should be prepared to give up something in order to solve our budget challenges, and I think most public servants agree with that. Democrats and Republicans agree with that. In fact, many public employees in your respective states have already agreed to cuts.

“But let me also say this: I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon. We need to attract the best and the brightest to public service. These times demand it. We’re not going to attract the best teachers for our kids, for example, if they only make a fraction of what other professionals make. We’re not going to convince the bravest Americans to put their lives on the line as police officers or firefighters if we don’t properly reward that bravery.

“So, yes, we need a conversation about pensions and Medicare and Medicaid and other promises that we’ve made as a nation. And those will be tough conversations, but necessary conservations. As we make these decisions about our budget going forward, though, I believe that everyone should be at the table and that the concept of shared sacrifice should prevail. If all the pain is borne by only one group — whether it’s workers, or seniors, or the poor — while the wealthiest among us get to keep or get more tax breaks, we’re not doing the right thing. I think that’s something that Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on.”

Christie, of course, has made his national bones on the issues of pension and benefit reforms, but he has done so with a blunt New Jersey style that has often left union members feeling as if they have been rabbit punched. The New Jersey Education Association has argued, too, that teacher layoffs could have been avoided if the governor had renewed the state’s so-called “millionaires tax” on the state’s most wealthy citizens. Christie has refused to consider that option.

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Gov. Chris Christie

But Obama wasn’t done yet. He then discussed infrastructure as one leg of a needed investment strategy in the nation’s future:

“The third way that we need to invest is in our infrastructure — everything from new roads and bridges to high-speed rail and high-speed Internet — projects that create hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs. And I know that in some of your states, infrastructure projects have garnered controversy. Sometimes they’ve gotten caught up in partisan politics.

“This hasn’t traditionally been a partisan issue. Lincoln laid the rails during the course of a civil war. Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System. Both parties have always believed that America should have the best of everything. We don’t have third-rate airports and third-rate bridges and third-rate highways. That’s not who we are. We shouldn’t start going down that path.”

“New companies are going to seek out the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information — whether they’re in Chicago or they’re in Shanghai. And I want them to be here, in the United States. So to those who say that we can’t afford to make investments in infrastructure, I say we can’t afford not to make investments in infrastructure. We always have had the best infrastructure. The notion that somehow we’d give up that leadership at this critical juncture in our history makes no sense.”

Christie famously killed the Access to the Region’s Core tunnel between New York and New Jersey, saying the cost overruns would blow a huge hole in the state’s budget and lave a crippling bill for the Garden State’s already beleaguered taxpayers. He then got into a high-profile argument with U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., over that decision, at one point saying the senator was badly mistaken over his efforts to explore alternatives to the ARC tunnel.

“…it’s just another day for Frank Lautenberg,” Christie sniffed during a November editorial board with New Jersey Press Media newspapers. “The sun rose, he’s wrong, the sun will set.”

All of this plays out in the backdrop of the showdown between Wisconsin public workers and Gov. Scott Walker, a bitter battle that landed in New Jersey Friday when thousands of public workers rallied in front of the Statehouse in Trenton in support of their colleagues to the West (they took some pokes at Christie, too). And let’s not forget national politics. While Christie has repeatedly said he is not a candidate for president in 2012, he has become a darling of national conservatives who like his straightforward style.

Christie also has been openly critical of Obama’s leadership, saying he isn’t addressing the tough economic issues and instead is focusing on the “candy” of America politics such as access to high-speed internet.

But are the American people on the side of Christie or Obama in these wars?

A Rasmussen poll in January indicated that Americans are evenly divided on whether pay and benefits for public workers should be slashed, but the survey also found that support for public unions had slipped to under 50 percent.

In New Jersey, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that better than 50 of respondents approved of Christie’s decision to spike the ARC tunnel.